


words are futile devices

by finedae



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Yearning, baekhyun has a lot of feelings and zero communication skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21725362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finedae/pseuds/finedae
Summary: it rains all day. baekhyun goes where he feels safe; he goes to kyungsoo.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Do Kyungsoo | D.O
Comments: 17
Kudos: 116





	words are futile devices

**Author's Note:**

> entirely inspired by sufjan stevens’ futile devices
> 
> also wanted a fic where kyungsoo does most of the talking for once.

Baekhyun realises he can imagine exactly how Kyungsoo’s going to react just as he finishes paying his cab fare and dashes to the apartment. The unsurprised rise of his brows, the quirks of his cheek as he’d smile and let him in. Kyungsoo has a way of making Baekhyun feel like he was expecting him. 

Baekhyun has long memorised the curves of Kyungsoo’s face, the deep set of his eyes, thick brows, countless moles, how his cheeks stretch when he smiles, the rigidity of his jaw when he’s mad. He is perhaps the only person Baekhyun could accurately describe to a police sketch artist, which Baekhyun never would. There are some things he’d always keep to himself.

“Hi.” Kyungsoo opens the door, unsurprised smile.

“Hi.” Baekhyun breathes, aware he’s probably dripping on the wooden floors. It’s been raining for hours today, Seoul rarely gets day long showers. 

“Long day, huh?” Kyungsoo asks, handing him a towel and helping him take off his coat and placing it on the drying rack.

Baekhyun shrugs, violently drying his hair. It had been a long day. Every day is a long day. He takes his shoes off, heading to the living space while Kyungsoo heads to the kitchen, “Earl Grey or English Breakfast?” He asks, setting the kettle. “I was just about to make a pot for myself, lucky timing.”

“Green tea.” Baekhyun replies, just to be difficult and gets a tap on his forehead for his troubles. He gratefully reaches out for the steaming hot cup with gentle wisps of smoke, warming his hands and letting the teabag steep. “What were you doing?” Baekhyun asks, noticing the brand new guitar case open on the floor.

Kyungsoo set his cup down, opening the laptop and showed Baekhyun the YouTube tutorials he was watching. “Chanyeol’s been too busy to teach me, so I’ve been trying these instead.” At Baekhyun’s insistence, he picks it up and strums two basic chords to something familiar. Baekhyun doesn’t know enough about guitars but he likes how Kyungsoo holds it, the confidence of his fingers as the metal hums beneath it. It suits him. 

“You’re going to be better than Chanyeol.” The thing about Baekhyun’s lies is that he believes them entirely. Kyungsoo, on the other hand, waves it off, putting the guitar back in its case. 

Baekhyun finishes his tea slowly, and Kyungsoo plugs his laptop to the charger and gets engrossed with his work. Baekhyun stares at his side profile, furrowed brows behind his glasses as he concentrates, his pierced ear that he refuses to wear anything in but still hasn’t closed somehow, the mole on his neck. Once Baekhyun gets bored, and the weather shows no sign of improving, he curls up on the couch instead, letting the sounds of the rain and the click clack of Kyungsoo’s keyboard lull him to sleep.

He wakes up warm, content, and disoriented. He realises Kyungsoo put a blanket up to his neck while he was asleep, the latter nowhere to be seen now. Baekhyun takes a deep breath, it smells like the specific fabric softener Kyungsoo uses, its light weight somehow dragging him down, or rather as he clings on to it wanting this feeling of contentment to last a little longer. He’s not sure how long he slept, he had handed his phone to Kyungsoo to charge it, but the sun had set and it was ominously dark outside. The rain was less audible, but still dripped down the windows in long, fast races. He could just tell traffic would be horrible tonight.

“You’re up?” Kyungsoo asks from his room, once Baekhyun comes back from the bathroom. Baekhyun folds the blanket as Kyungsoo joins him, bringing his phone. 7 PM. 

“How long was I out for?”

“3 hours, give or take. You looked so comfortable, I didn’t want to wake you. You barely get enough sleep.” Kyungsoo nags but in a way that leaves Baekhyun feeling warm inside. He notices Kyungsoo brought his large crocheting needles and ball of yarn and had the strangest mental image of Kyungsoo doing household chores, like vacuuming, while Baekhyun was dead asleep. He snorts and checks his work emails.

“If I crochet you a scarf, will you promise to wear it?” Kyungsoo asks suddenly. Baekhyun’s almost caught off guard enough to say something inappropriate like, _‘baby, I’d wear a noose if you make it for me’_ but thankfully has the foresight to nod and make an affirmative “uh huh” noise. 

Kyungsoo nods, looping the threads within the needle. “It’s just — I can do it when I get in the groove but I always give up cause I don’t have a goal to go towards. Now you’d be my goal.” Baekhyun’s the goal. Kyungsoo wants to knit him a scarf. Kyungsoo sometimes says these things, puts them out into the universe so effortlessly and Baekhyun’s left having to hold himself together just from the sheer strength of what it means to him.

He continues, telling Baekhyun about the different structures of socks. His voice is melodic, fills the apartment in a way that it belongs. It’s not at all like when Baekhyun keeps talking, desperately trying to fill the silence. But that’s with other people, that need for performance. Here, he just watches Kyungsoo’s deft fingers at work — patiently and consistently looping into an entire patchwork. He could never do it, the repetitiveness would eat at him. Kyungsoo’s so good at this, at being whole in all the places Baekhyun feels incomplete. It’s not envy, it’s never been envy, what he feels towards Kyungsoo.

“What — stop looking at me like that!” Kyungsoo laughs at however the face of complete mesmerisation and pride looked. Baekhyun just blinked at him, as if under a spell. He can’t prove he’s not. It would explain the warmth in his chest and the urge to walk into traffic when Kyungsoo looks at him a certain way. 

“Like what?”

“Like that.” Kyungsoo held his gaze and Baekhyun felt powerless to avert it.

If he put into words how he felt, it would be desperate and rushed and violent and tender and pleading. It makes him want to take a hammer to his rib cage and let whatever is hiding in there out, when the pounding of his heart becomes unbearable. _How_ _desperate_ _is_ _it_ _to_ _want_ _so_ _much?_ He wants to touch, wants to map every mole on his body, wants to take him apart completely and put him back together just to be sure this impossible boy of light was flesh and bones like the rest of them underneath. _‘You are the light of my life, I literally think about you all the time. It’s terminal. Please think of me just as much.’_ He could not say this, wouldn’t know how to, but sometimes his heart thudded in his chest so loudly he thought surely, surely it could be heard from miles away, from sitting right across him. But that would be dumb.

So he doesn’t say anything at all. 

Baekhyun can’t be sure if Kyungsoo’s eyes flickered to his lips the second his phone buzzed and they both jumped at the noise.

“It’s my ride.” Baekhyun grimaced. There was surge pricing for the weather and traffic. 

“I was just about to start dinner, I thought you were gonna...” Kyungsoo trails off, voice wavering. He cleared his throat. 

“I can’t, I have a work thing.” Baekhyun didn’t have to fake being apologetic about this lie. 

“No, of course,” Kyungsoo nodded, getting on his feet, “Your ride’s here.”

“Thanks for... sorry for being bad company.” Baekhyun said, putting on his coat which hadn’t fully dried, the dampness sticking to him.

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. Standing at his doorframe he tells Baekhyun, “Get home safe. Try and get some actual sleep. I love you.” 

There, Kyungsoo always knows how to knock the wind out of him, no matter how hard he tries to imprint him to memory. “I—yeah, you too.” Baekhyun manages out dumbly, nodding, and quickly got on the lift. 

_I do love you._

Those are the words he doesn’t quite get out, and yet Kyungsoo might be the only person he doesn’t need to say it out loud to for it to be heard. 

**Author's Note:**

> To all who crochet, yes I know baekhyun refers to it as knitting. I’m sorry but he is a dumbass.


End file.
